


mercy

by codedredalert



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Recovery is hard, feat mr trafalgar "i have 999 issues and 0 healthy ways of coping" law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27082189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codedredalert/pseuds/codedredalert
Summary: In the aftermath of Dressrosa, Law has to come to terms with the fact that Luffy let Doflamingo live.
Relationships: Donquixote Doflamingo & Trafalgar D. Water Law, Monkey D. Luffy & Trafalgar D. Water Law, Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Comments: 22
Kudos: 156





	mercy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [twelveshots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twelveshots/gifts).



> Thank you meg for being a 100/10 collab buddy, for making wonderful graphics for the op tarot fics, for putting up with my 54689087687 back-and-forth edit requests, and for always being super encouraging. I appreciate you and I hope that this is exactly the sad lawlu you were looking for. 
> 
> (Unbeta'd and babey's first lawlu fic so unlikely, but I'll hope you like this anyway!)

Regret was pointless. 

He'd made his decision— he'd trust in Strawhat Luffy. He'd made his choice in the heat of the Dressrosa sun, inspired by Strawhat's reckless bull-headed charge for Doflamingo's seat of power. In a moment of faith, he'd thrown all in, bet his life and life's purpose, spirit strangely lifted by Strawhat's determination. 

At some point, Law distantly knew it was over. A blur of pain and fatigue and overwhelming, unnamed emotions, crashing through him in towering waves until he went under, finally succumbing to much needed sleep. Exhaustion was the only sedative that could reliably send him under, always had been. 

Then he woke and suddenly, it hit him— Doflamingo still _lived._

The sick lurch nearly made him throw up when all the pain hadn't. 

They had to leave Dressrosa in a hurry, there had been too much marine presence, it was a haze. Law functioned— of course he damn well _functioned_ , needs must, and he was needed to work with Nami-ya to get them on the course to Zou, but he wasn't okay, and not just because his body was healing. He hadn't been okay for a very long time but he'd thought misguidedly that now would be different. That somehow, once Dressrosa was over, everything would be okay. 

He felt a little cheated that it wasn't. 

So he retreated, but there wasn't anywhere to run to on a ship full of strangers. He snapped at everyone, Bartolomeo— who _especially_ deserved it— and the Strawhats— who definitely didn't— but Law had a shitty personality and that wasn't about to change just for the Strawhats. They would learn to get used to it, just like the Heart crew had. He didn't have the energy to spare to be polite, his mind couldn't stop spinning with the thought _Doflamingo is alive_ , somewhere behind walls and seastone and the paperwork whims of the world government and marines. 

It wouldn't hold him. 

Law was shaking with the thought. 

It couldn't possibly. Doflamingo. Doflamingo had been everything to Law, once, a long time ago, and for even longer after that he'd been a great and terrible beast of mythos that somehow Law had to find a way to face. And now, despite everything, his shadow loomed large and inevitable, but _it was supposed to be over_. It was supposed to be _over_ but how could it be over _like this_? 

Law retreated to the stern to find enough air to breathe and glared until he was left alone.

Mostly alone. 

"Hoiiiiiiiiii! Toraooooooo!"

Law looked up and tried to project _leavemealone leavemealone leavemealone_ but it was futile. Strawhat bounded up to him, grinning and looking directly at Law's face and seeing far too much. 

Law turned his face away, but he didn't ask Strawhat to leave. He still needed Strawhat to get to Zou and survive Wano. And— and for other things. Things Law didn't want to try to find words for. The expression, fierce, furious on Law's behalf, as if to say _you were wronged and I will make things right_ , as if that were irrefutable truth. The determination so strong it swept up like the great swell of a wave in a Grand Line storm, where there was no land to break it for miles. The easy trust that made Law feel bold for real, for the first time in years instead of a hollow front and fear that he wasn't enough, wasn't competent enough, wasn't strong enough, wasn't smart enough to keep anything that really mattered. 

Strawhat was— had been— an almost-cure to the fear and worry and rage and the tired wish for everything to stop for a while.

And then he'd betrayed… whatever it was in Law's heart that ached so tenderly looking at him now. 

Strawhat's smile fell and the ache in Law's heart took on a guilty tinge, somewhere beneath all the worry and the hurt. 

"Torao, what's wrong?"

Strawhat didn't know how he'd wronged Law. Law didn't know if this was better or worse. 

"I'm fine," Law lied.

Strawhat took this in, face blank in the way that said so clearly— _you're lying and I don't believe you, but that's what you want and I'll give it to you_. There was no judgment, just acceptance, and Law bristled at being so obviously accommodated but was relieved, an odd juxtaposition. 

"Okay," said Strawhat and he really meant _okay_ , and then another thought crossed his mind and he brightened. "Oh yeah, I wanted to say, come eat with us!" 

"Not hungry," Law replied, but Strawhat had already taken his arm and started walking to the kitchens, letting his limb stretch as Law took no step forward. 

Law really wasn't hungry. He rarely was, but since joining the Strawhats, they'd set a place for him at their table and expected him to be there, welcoming him as a given. 

He'd been trying so hard not to get attached, refusing to use their names as much as convenient. It wasn't working. 

He can't get attached. If he did, and they died—

— _if Luffy died—_

— Law would break. 

(He would die too. That was a given.)

Law tilted his head down, free hand coming up to tug his hat lower over his brow. 

It would be so much easier if he could just hate Strawhat. If he could just be angry and lash out, instead of being drowned in kindness and someone who didn't have to fight for him giving everything as if he was one of their own. It was a grace that would overtake him if he considered it for more than a passing moment. 

But Strawhat let Doflamingo live. 

Where two great Blues of the world met, there was undersea fire and freezing chasm. They did not neutralise each other, far from it. Punk Hazard demonstrated the principle— there was inferno, there was absolute zero, and then where they met was a wasteland.

Law didn't know how he felt, other than _too much_ , which in turn felt an awful lot like _nothing_.

"Your mercy is going to be the end of me," he murmured, fingers bloodless where he gripped Kikoku tightly, numb. 

He wasn't sure what he referred to exactly but that felt like it covered everything. Strawhat's compassion that Law couldn't understand, that he would have to struggle with, that he couldn't do anything about. He was a pirate, an outlaw. He was supposed to be free of shackles like being good and moral and heroic. He wasn't all that, and the quiet weight of expectation laid on his shoulders was so suffocating he felt it physically. _Charitable criminals_. The pirate king's _noblesse oblige_. It'd be funny, if it weren't so sickening. 

Strawhat whipped around, instincts animal-sharp, unconsciously _haki_ -augmented. 

"Huh?" Strawhat frowned, puzzled. "You said something?"

He took a long, long, loooong step, and was back at Law's side in one stride. Almost comically, Strawhat bent at the knees to look up under Law's hat, to see Law's expression. Law tried to look away, but this time, Strawhat followed, curving his body to the side. Law wished he hadn't said anything, and he wants to run. He always wanted to run, that's how he stayed alive this long. He wants to run away from this place and this person and the way his pulse rocketed skyward when Strawhat looked at him, when they were this close. 

"Eh, you're angry," Strawhat realised. "Why?"

Law froze. 

_You let him live._ It hangs in the air, the accusation of a lifetime, brushing Law's lips and tongue, struggling to come to existence on the breath Law wasn't giving it, that he didn't have to give. _You robbed me of my life's purpose, why why why I thought I could trust you—_

He might tear, might vomit, and horrified at the thought of either, he reached for rage. Rage was safe. His body had years of experience running on rage alone. The old, familiar desire to raze the world to ashes, burning death compressed to run a heart, nuclear like the submarine he called home. 

"You," Law ground out between his teeth, somehow. "Let Doflamingo live."

And he couldn't say anything more.

What could he say that would make Strawhat understand how every breath Doflamingo took was stolen from an all-encompassing love Law could never hope to be fully deserving of? That every moment he lived spat in the face of Cora-san's memory? 

Strawhat cocked his head to the side. He had the gall to look _surprised_ at Law's answer, and he's confused but somehow measured and letting the brunt of Law's loaded, inelegant accusation slide past him

"Yeah?" Strawhat asked, brow furrowed in confusion, a hand to his chin, thinking. He considered this very seriously, eyes squeezed shut, then after a long moment, he looked up, straight into Law's eyes. 

"Nope, this is the best way," Strawhat said bluntly, and for a moment the rage nearly _blinded_ Law. He wanted to grab Strawhat by the shirt, to summon Room and _make_ him leave, drop him into the unforgiving sea before Law gave in to the desire to inflict as much hurt and fear upon the world as it had to him. 

(He'd never, not to Strawhat, never, but god it would be so much easier if he could.)

Strawhat looked at him, waiting. He was still covered in scratches and bandages and Law had seen what lay under them. Pain that was rightfully Law's and Law's alone, that would have killed him if Strawhat had not said yes that fateful, desperate day in the winter half of Punk Hazard.

Oh he could have used Strawhat Luffy so well if his own damn heart didn't bleed wound for wound and more besides.

Law kept his hands by his sides and tried to breathe. His breath shuddered. It didn't mist, snatched away by the sea breeze, and the moderate climate between Dressrosa and Zou. 

"Explain," Law said, voice tight and not trusting himself to say more. 

Strawhat nodded.

"So, that guy wanted Dressrosa, right? But he doesn't have it anymore. And he cares. But the dead don't care. You see?"

Strawhat's face was his usual neutral cheer, like it's an obvious fact and he's happy to clear up Law's confusion. Like Doflamingo hasn't _owned_ Law with strangling fear and impotent hatred for the last thirteen, sixteen years. 

_The dead don't care._

Law exhaled sharply enough that it could pass for a laugh, if laughter could be dry and humourless and dead. 

It was word for word what Law had said to Luffy in the aftermath of Marineford, when death weighed heavy and foreign on Strawhat's conquering soul. It was cold comfort and a shitty truism, but Law's mind clung to it. _And this we know to be true— the dead don't care. They can't._ It worked because it was irrefutable. 

"And Torao," Strawhat said suddenly and Law looked up.

"What," he prompted when Strawhat didn't continue. 

"That guy wanted Torao to do what he would've done and be what he wanted, but that's stupid. He can't have Torao, because Torao is Torao." 

The tautology was inane and ridiculous, and even more ridiculous was how it worked to settle something in Law, an assurance he didn't know he needed. So, someone else could look at him and see that he wasn't Doflamingo's creature anymore. The dark parts of himself that he'd painstakingly cut out and cast away. The parts of himself that made him admire Doflamingo in the first place. They weren't gone completely, not yet maybe, but it was something to know that his efforts weren't in vain. 

Something must have shown on his face because Luffy's expression lifted, lightened with the resolution between them. Law hadn't realised how his own mood had darkened Strawhat's so much, but now Strawhat returned to high spirits, shining like the sun, essential for the world to carry on as it should. 

(He wasn't so naive to think that the sun was _good_ , he knows it can be oppressive, has seen first-hand death by heat exhaustion. But in his heart, he was still northern and he remembered how the sun broke through the winter to make his childhood city shine.) 

Strawhat broke into a grin, then a laugh. 

"We won, Torao," he said to Law, for Law. "We _won_."

He put an arm around Law's shoulders, beaming up at him and the rage evapourated, leaving only fatigue that made Law want to sink into that embrace, close his eyes and just stay in the way Strawhat said "we", said "we won", like everything was right with the world and Law could— for a moment of beautiful suspended disbelief— truly rest before he faced the world and everything that was waiting for them in Wano.

Law has joked-but-not-really-joked that that was impossible, that he'd rest when he was dead. But Strawhat made the impossible happen. He's proven it before, time and time again. Dressrosa's outcome should have been impossible, and yet everyone still lived.

And, even if that included Doflamingo, maybe that was okay.

"... we won," breathed Law, letting Strawhat's weight drag them closer, drag him forward. 

Strawhat's grin stretched wider, and he bumped their foreheads together, their hats catching on each other. 

"Yeah," he said. "C'mon Torao, let's go eat." 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> =w= ((im softe nowe))  
> also Luffy is hard to write, but if this worked hot damn pls tell me
> 
> ( [twitter](https://twitter.com/codedredalert) /[tumblr](https://codedredalert.tumblr.com/) / [insta](https://www.instagram.com/codedredalert/) )


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